In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) (18 page)

It was the alien who’d tracked me from the Nisk
colony to the bait trap! He must have seen me board the Loport cable car and
set an ambush at the Lone Peak tower.

PHYSICAL MOVEMENT DETECTED.

I still felt nothing, but my bionetic receptors
were sensing my body being dragged off the cable car.

Restore physical, disable safeties
.

It was going to hurt – it might not even work –
but if I stayed like this, I was sure to wake up with no options, if I woke up
at all.

40% FUNCTIONING POSSIBLE
.

That was low. Against Earth-tech nerve pulses with
revival safeties off, my threading could get me much more, but the alien had hit
me with something that had really scrambled my senses.

Suppress twitch response. Activate restore.

My threading tried kick starting my body while preventing
involuntary muscle movements that would warn the alien I was coming out of it. The
ringing grew louder as bionetic controllers released a massive blast of adrenalin,
spiking my metabolic rate and blood glucose levels. Neurotransmitters flooded
through my body while bioelectrical impulses shocked unresponsive muscles to
life. To my captor, I appeared as lifeless as ever, while inside, partial feeling
returned.

My head exploded with pain, wiping away the white
fog as I felt myself being dragged face down from the cable car. Realizing he couldn’t
see my face, I pushed my eyes half open, trying to focus. Blurry metal boots
passed in and out of view as he pulled me across the maintenance platform. When
we reached the edge, he released me and touched his wrist, then a narrow metal
walkway extended to the maintenance platform from an oval shaped airlock
suspended in empty blue sky a few meters away.

I tensed feeble muscles, then spun on my hip and clumsily
kicked out at his legs. It was a weak blow, but it caught him by surprise,
knocking him forward off the platform. With lightning fast reflexes, his hand
snapped out and caught the stealth ship’s walkway. He swung like a pendulum as
his helmeted head turned to me, then I slammed the back of my boot onto his gloved
fingertips. The alien lost his grip, reached for the walkway with his other
hand, but missed and fell. Halfway to the ground, his boots glowed in the
fading light, slowing his fall, letting him land unharmed – not the result I’d
hoped for. He immediately launched himself in a tech-assisted jump onto the
tower and began scrambling up the narrow ladder back to the maintenance
platform.

“Tough bastard,” I slurred, starting to drag
myself back toward the cable car. He’d manipulated the controls, forcing it to
stop, but a bar light over the door was filling, counting down the seconds until
it continued on its way.

“Clear doors,” a synthesized female voice ordered,
“the car is leaving the platform.”

I forced rubbery arms and legs to push myself across
the platform. As I neared the gondola, the door slid shut and it glided away,
carrying Jase and Izin – both still unconscious – with it. I crawled to the
edge of the platform and looked down. The humanoid was already more than
halfway up the tower. I drew my P-50 with semi-paralyzed fingers and fired
several poorly aimed shots. The first few gelslugs went wide, another bounced
off the tower near his shoulder, then by luck alone one glanced harmlessly off
his helmet. He immediately swung around the tower and continued climbing using its
metal framework for cover. He was climbing so fast, he’d reach the platform
long before the next cable car arrived. I rolled onto my back, then with
fumbling fingers ejected the gelslug magazine from my gun and replaced it with armor
piercing hardtips. When I finally got the lethal ammo loaded and rolled back to
the edge, the tower below was deserted. I turned and aimed at end of the
platform, waiting for him to show himself, then large metal boots crashed down
either side of me. Before I could lift my gun, he snatched it out of my hand.

“Enough!” he said in a deep voice.

I rolled over and kicked my leg up, driving the
toe of my boot into his back and catching his ankle as he stumbled forward, but
he tucked and rolled gracefully over me, coming easily to his feet.

“You recover fast for a human,” he said in stilted
Unionspeak.

“What do you want?”

“Information.”

“What kind of information.”

“Not from you human, for you.”

He was trading me for information? “You’re a
bounty hunter?”

He grunted in disgust. “I’m a tracer.”

I sat up slowly, feeling the numbness beginning to
fade. “What’s that?”

“I find what others cannot.”

“Do you have a name?”

“I am Gern Vrate.”

“Never heard of you.”

“I am Kesarn.”

“From the Orion Arm?” I asked, forcing myself to
stand on wobbly legs.

“No.” He ran a disdainful eye over my P-50 before tossing
it onto the platform behind him. “I am from what you call the Perseus Arm.”

That was over five thousand light years away, far
beyond the edge of Mapped Space. I’d certainly never been there and was
unlikely to ever reach it. “You’ve come a long way just to kidnap me.”

“I’m not here for you,” he said motioning me toward
the walkway.

I ignored his order, gauging the distance to the
next cable car now climbing to the platform. “How’d you track me?” I asked,
stalling for time.

“I scanned your navigation system. Easy to do if I
can get close enough.” He reached over his shoulder, retrieved the bulky weapon
he’d used near the bait trap and aimed it at me one-handed. “Don’t make me use
this.”

“You won’t shoot. You want to trade me.”

“You only need to be alive, not whole.”

A persuasive argument if ever I’d heard one. I
started hobbling toward the walkway, accentuating my unsteadiness, watching the
cable car approaching behind him. I figured he’d made the last car stop at the
tower, but the next one showed no sign of slowing.

At the edge of the platform, I feigned a stumble
and dropped to one knee. “I’ll fall.”

Vrate aimed at my legs. “Crawl.”

“I can’t,” I said as the cable car reached the platform.

Gern Vrate stepped forward, reaching for my jacket
collar. I caught his wrist, dragging him forward and tripping him with my
outstretched leg. He fell onto his face, then I threw myself at my gun, scooped
it off the deck and leapt into the air at the cable car as a blast from Vrate’s
weapon flashed behind me. The gondola’s door was shut, but the landing skids underneath
should have been an easy ultra-reflexed jump, only I was still battling the
after effects of being stunned. My hand narrowly missed the skid, then I was
falling, sailing beyond Lone Peak’s ragged cliffs toward the plain far below. A
wall of weathered rock flashed past, then a powerful hand caught my gun belt. I
twisted, trying to shoot Vrate over my shoulder, but he struck my hand with the
butt of his gun, sending my P-50 spinning away into the air beside us, then the
base of his boots glowed brightly, slowing us both.

“You don’t give up easy, do you?” I said.

“Kesarn never give up.”

Vrate planted his two big boots wide apart as we landed,
absorbing the shock with his powerful legs, then he dropped me on the ground
and kicked me in the stomach, sending me flying.

I landed on my back, gasping for air. “What was
that for?”

“You are beginning to irritate me.”

Vrate strode toward me, then wrapped a thin
metallic strip around my wrists. I felt cold metal form a tight bracelet, then
my arms went numb. Before I knew it, he slapped another strip around my ankles,
paralyzing my legs.

“I don’t suppose we can make a deal?” I asked as
he stepped back.

Vrate ignored me as he walked a short distance out
from the cliff, then touched a dark control surface on his forearm.

“Are you carrying me back? It’s a long climb, even
for you.”

Night was descending, rapidly reducing visibility.
My sniffer could already reach out further than I could see. It began warning
of a contact at the edge of its range, approaching from the south west,
something it hadn’t scanned before. Whatever it was, it had spotted us from a
long way off and was coming in fast. My gun wasn’t far away, but it would do me
no good while I was wrapped in Kesarn restraints. Vrate had secured his weapon in
his back harness while his attention was fixed upon the sky, following
something I couldn’t see.

“Bringing your ship down?”

Vrate kept his fingers touching his arm control. I
couldn’t tell if he was piloting the ship remotely or merely feeding it instructions,
but it kept him busy as the large creature, still no more than a shadow, appeared
in the distance.

“Having an invisible ship must make the kidnapping
business very profitable,” I said.

“It’s for infiltration,” he said absently, “not
that we do that anymore.”

Infiltration of what? “Maybe if you told me what
you were looking for–?”

“I’ve found what I’m looking for!” Vrate snapped
as he watched his invisible ship glide toward the ground.

When it landed, he hoisted me over his shoulder
and started out onto the plain. In the distance, the lights of Hadley’s Retreat
were just coming on, and further away and much higher, Citadel’s lights were also
visible.

“We going far?” I asked as my listener picked up a
distant pounding on the ground and the contact marker floating in my mind’s eye
turned from orange to red. Whatever had us in its sights, my bionetics had
decided it was time to get out of the way.

“Further than you’ve ever been,” he said.

“I’ve travelled a lot.”

“That’s what you think.”

“Considering you’re from Perseus, a place no human
has ever been, you know my language well.” His command of Unionspeak was
impressive, considering it was a physical impossibility for some of our Orion
Arm neighbors.

“We know many languages.”

“Met many humans?”

Vrate grunted. “You’re the first.”

“How am I doing so far? Making a good first impression?”

“No.”

My infrared optics illuminated a dark red blur of
daunting size heading straight for us.

“And here I thought we were getting along so
well.”

Vrate’s helmeted head turned toward me, puzzled
why I would think such a thing. “The Kesarn do not like idle chatter.”

“That’s a pity, because I have one more question?”

Vrate grunted irritably. “What?”

“How’s your hearing?”

“Why?”

The dark mass was now as big as a house and
charging at us like a Rigosian swamp bull protecting its young! “Well if your
hearing was as good as mine,” it was almost on top of us, “you’d know to … look
left.”

Vrate glanced to the left as the bonecrusher
surged out of the darkness. He threw me to the side, freeing his hands so he
could reach over his shoulder for his gun, but the massive creature scooped him
up in its jaws before he got to it. The huge six legged beast lifted him off
the ground, trying to crush him as it slowed. It tossed its head back and
forth, shaking him like a rag doll. For a moment, I thought he was already dead,
then I saw he had an arm free and was reaching for his gun as his legs kicked
vainly against the beast’s enormous jaw.

“Vrate!” I yelled, unable to move my legs or arms.
“Free me!”

“No,” he wheezed, giving up on his gun and clawing
with his free hand at the bonecrusher’s eyes.

“We’ll both die!”

“No!” he declared obstinately.

The bonecrusher lifted its head high, then threw
Vrate’s body down hard. For a moment, he lay motionless then he reached up for
the gun strapped to his back. He got it free just as the bonecrusher scooped
him up, sending his gun spinning off into the darkness. It lifted its head high
as it tried snapping him in two.

“I can save you!”

The metal bands binding my wrists and ankles dropped
away, instantly restoring feeling to my arms and legs. I pushed myself to my
feet and stumbled to where my P-50 lay. Its armor piercing hardtips wouldn’t be
enough to kill the huge creature pounding Gern Vrate to death, but they might
tickle it enough to let him go. I glanced at the cliff face, knowing if I started
climbing now, I’d be out of reach by the time the bonecrusher finished with him
and came looking for me. Leaving him was the smart thing to do, but I saw the giant
creature hurl him onto the ground again, then incredibly he stirred, broken but
still alive.

“Damn it,” I said, then ran toward the bonecrusher
as it scooped Vrate’s shattered body up to finish him off.

Twenty meters from the creature, I fired high,
aiming above its deeply recessed eyes, fearful of hitting Vrate if I went too
low. The armor piercing slug ricocheted off its immense skull, but had so
little effect the bonecrusher hardly reacted. I fired twice more as I ran to
them, hitting its bone-plate covered chest and its knee, but it simply ignored
me. When I was almost alongside, Vrate lay pinned in its jaws, now completely
helpless.

“Stupid human!” he wheezed. “You made it angry!”

I fired at the creature’s eye, but its head was
moving so fast, all I managed to do was chip a piece of bone off its skull.

“Lower,” Vrate ordered.

It took me a moment to realize what he meant. He could
see my weapon wasn’t powerful enough to kill the bonecrusher, only him. “No!”

“Don’t miss!”

Vrate’s armor covered head turned to me, waiting
for the kill shot, then the bonecrusher reared up and threw him down onto the
ground with tremendous force, trying to break every bone in his body. I darted
forward, switching to full auto as I reached Vrate’s body. The creature roared
above its shattered prey, then I emptied my P-50 into the roof of its open mouth.
The hardtips cut up through soft flesh, shattering its tiny brain, then the
bonecrusher froze in confusion, staring blankly ahead before collapsing to the
ground.